Just a few hours ago this was submitted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12242525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12242525 The first paragraph

Just a few hours ago this was submitted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12242525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12242525 The first paragraph reads: "One central fact about the global economy lurks just beneath the year’s remarkable headlines: Economic growth in advanced nations has been weaker for longer than it has been in the lifetime of most people on earth." We can extend our duration of economic success for a very long time, but not for forever. At some point we go dark. It has happened to every civilization in history, slowly or suddenly, primitive or sophisticated, for what appears to be about a million different reasons. I don't know whether this time it is 'The Big One', but it is folly to assume it shall never occur because we're more sophisticated than before. The same was true of every civilization before us. Other than the Net I don't think there's a single institution we have that some other former civilization had in some way on a smaller scale.